You have to bring this thinking to your promotional gifts too. There may be many compelling reasons why you want the cheapest umbrella, the cheapest pen and the lowest price possible on your giveaway T-shirts. But, before opting for the cheapest, priced product it pays to think about the audience you are hoping to attract with these gifts. When they open up your umbrella on a windy and rainy day and it’s transported inside out, breaking in the process, what impression will they have of you and your brand? The cheap pen you gave to your valued clients may do the job it was paid to do but every time they use it, with your name winking at them from the barrel, what will they be thinking about you albeit subconsciously? High-value provider or a bit of a cheapskate? It has been said that we are judged by the company that we keep so choosing to give valued prospects and even more valued clients cheap as chips promotional gifts could count against you. And yet moving up a notch or two with your budget can make an altogether different impression. The difference in price between for example a very cheap pen and a pen of decent quality can be just 10 pence per pen. For that small but incredibly important handful of clients that you want to entertain on your golf day, spending just £5 pounds extra on each golf umbrella virtually guarantees that when they are next on the golf course, yours will be the one that’s in their caddie. And if you are giving your loyal trade customers a T-shirt, make sure that it will last more than a few washes so that they are advertising your brand far more than you could even imagine! Talk to us if you would like to get real value from every penny of your promotional budget.

For the purposes of this blog however let’s just turn our attentions to the humble coaster and consider its mesmeric powers (I kid you not!). For decades coasters have been given out willy-nilly at exhibitions and trade fairs and included in goody bags. Fair play there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

But did you know that a coaster can be a strategic marketing tool that delivers a measurable return – way exceeding its modest cost?

For example you can mail it with your sales letter and include a benefit driven headline grabbing statistic about the product or service you are promoting. This is what Kalimex did when independent market research uncovered the fact that 9/10 of their customers preferred their brand of coolant leak repair over the nearest competitors’. The call to action within their sales letter encouraged their motor factor stockists to buy additional supplies. Together with the coaster it was responsible for generating £29,000 of additional orders. Not bad for a little square of foam with a catchy message!

Another business, providing software to libraries in a highly competitive marketplace was keen to ensure that their exhibition stand was packed out with the targeted prospects they were inviting to the exhibition. By enclosing a vibrant and colourful coaster which matched their corporate identity down to a tee with the invitation and by promising the invitees they would receive the remaining four elements of the desk set when they pitched up to their exhibition stand they enjoyed a packed and animated stand all day long. Because this little square of foam was so lightweight it did not add to their postage costs and needed no special treatment.

Of course, if your business operates in a customer facing environment, you may simply want to order coasters to present a consistent and professional image. Tatty beer mats, bits of paper with coffee rings adorning them do not make for a great first impression do they?

Have a chat with us if coasters float your boat!

It’s tempting to search for that marketing miracle at the end of the rainbow; you know the one that’s going to propel you to unimaginable riches and successes when in fact being brilliant at the basics is more than good enough.

What does this entail?

Well, it means treating each customer, each prospect as an individual as opposed to a line of data on a rather large prospecting list. It means standing in their shoes, looking at the landscape through their eyes and considering without a shred of ego why this person should consider giving you their business or should continue doing business with you. It means contemplating whether their circumstances have changed – in the current economic climate are they swimming, keeping their head just above the water or sinking? Do you perhaps need to demonstrate how your offering can really help them or should you suggest some changes to help tide them over until the storm passes?

If you are not sure of the answers to some of these questions it means plucking up the courage to talk to your customers or prospects without your selling hat on. The likelihood is that their answers will yield the precious nuggets that in turn will fuel your next relevant, targeted and charming marketing campaign.

That tipping point – the one that leads to the sale is much closer than you think.

A printing business was having difficulty converting lapsed customers back into paying clients. Opting for the road frequently travelled, they decided on e-mail marketing as their marketing communication tool. Now, I thought this a little strange. If you are a printer, specialising in producing printed communications for businesses to showcase your wares, you are sending out a very mixed message by using e-mail -a tool at the other end of the spectrum from paper-based communication – to try and seduce your wayward customers into using you again. Not unsurprisingly the results from their e-mail marketing campaigns fell into the ‘non-existent’ category.

What did we do to halt the decline and reinstate those lapsed customers?

• We created a letter containing a genuine hype-free message along the lines of   “we know that you have gone elsewhere for your printing requirements, but wouldn’t you like to compare what we can offer you with the service that you are receiving now? In the current challenging climate, it’s useful to have a comparison so that you can be reassured you really are getting the best value from your printer.”

• We attached the label from a mug to the letter, together with a business card, and enclosed the contents in a high-quality envelope. The envelope was addressed to a named recipient. [labels addressed to "the purchasing manager" for example scream 'junk mail!']

• We also included an offer… we explained that the label belonged to a very attractive Pantone mug. If the recipient booked a meeting with the salesman to discuss their printing requirements, they would receive two of the mugs filled to the brim with organic chocolates.

The mailing went out and the initial flurry of responses was very encouraging. One of the orders was for £11,000. Responses increased further still when the salesman followed up the mail shot with a telephone call.

All in all, £40,000 worth of sales ensued. Not bad for a simple, low cost campaign.

Of course, the mugs could have been used in a very different way. They could simply have been brought to the meeting as a giveaway, with no fanfare of trumpets in the shape of an offer all wrapped up in an attractive and targeted letter. But as this case study shows, it’s amazing what people will do for a thoughtful and attractive gift, especially when organic chocolates are added to make the offer even more delectable!

The moral of this story? Promotional gifts have a crucial part to play in generating warm leads, converting lapsed customers and opening the door to a potential sale – provided they are used appropriately and with consideration.

Are promotional gifts merely `after the event throw- away novelty gestures’, something to add to the shopping list when planning your exhibition say, or, is there a more serious side to them?  I don’t think that the answer is black and white.  For many people, me included, promotional gifts have demonstrated they are more than just the cherry on top of the cake.  They can artfully combine sizzle and substance when used as part of a well-planned campaign.  For example, I know from experience that a natty drinks mug filled with jellybeans can drive sales through the roof.  A T-shirt used as a giveaway in a competition can revive the fortunes of a flagging product and, a desk set comprising four elements can play a key role in ensuring that a seminar is packed out with eager attendees. (Send one piece within the initial mailshot, give the other pieces at the seminar itself.)  On the other hand, promotional gifts can tumble into a bottomless pit when they are bought for nothing more than a novelty factor and the choice of gift has no bearing on the business brand and the preferences of the target audience.

Even the right gifts can have the wrong impact.  For example, laying out row after row of freebies at your exhibition stand for the grab and go brigade is not only unimaginative it’s a complete waste of money.  You end up attracting the very audience you want to deter – the ones with deep pockets for freebies!  In today’s cost conscious climate when marketers and business owners alike have to account for every penny, buying shed loads of promotional gifts simply to make your stand look pretty or worse still, to tick a box on your exhibition planning itinerary is to be avoided at all costs.

There will always be a demand for promotional gifts – that’s not really up for debate.

But we need to be much savvier in how we use them.  When planning a marketing campaign, always consider whether including a promotional gift will encourage responses; accelerate sales, drive visitors to your website and so on.  Yes?  Then it’s down to choosing gifts that are appropriate to your brand and, an appropriate ‘reward’ or even dare I say ethical bribe for what you’re asking the person to do.  Offering a cheap coaster as an inducement for a large sale won’t work.  But, a nice quality mug filled with something fabulous could just be the tipping point that encourages a customer to spend a little more with you or, to start spending with you again.

The devil is in the planning and the detail as my old English teacher used to say!

Social media has got many of us, myself included firmly in its fluffy and cuddly but vice like grip.  Go a day without checking our status on facebook and twitter and we are positively twitchy.  But you know what?  Many of our clients may not share our enthusiasm to communicate online and, even if they do, there’s still plenty of off-line marketing to be done.  Exhibitions, direct mail, seminars, networking – there’s no sign that we are going to migrate lock stock and barrel to the online universe leaving these tried and trusted marketing channels behind – the ones that earn us money and, drive customers to our door.

So what has this got to do with pens?

Well, pens are still the number one bestselling promotional product and not without good reason.  Enclose a pen that matches your brand in an envelope together with your considered, crafted and targeted direct mail letter and you can guarantee that the envelope will be opened and, the recipient will read your letter. Why? You have piqued their curiosity sufficiently for them to do so and, provided your pen is attractive, you’ve put them in a positive frame of mind.

Give a pen to a visitor willing to share their details with you on your exhibition stand and the coldest of relationships can blossom from such a low-cost gesture.  Clip a pen to your business card when you’re networking and you’ll be remembered; the pen retained even though your business card may land in the bin.  Offer a pen as the incentive for people to visit your website or subscribe to your blog, then provided it’s not of the ‘cheap as chips’ variety you’re likely to get higher levels of response than if you had simply offered nothing.

You may be a business that buys pens to reinforce your corporate identity.  You don’t want your customer facing staff taking down details using a chewed up biro that has seen better days.

The bottom line is that if you’re looking for a measurable return on your precious marketing budget and you want your campaigns to have the desired impact, including the cost of a pen in your marketing budget could be a jolly good idea.